Sketches from Life (1)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1849 edition. Excerpt: ...mind to that; but soda is sure to be efficacious in the end; no headache is eternal. After eight-and-forty hours, hope will very possibly break in; while it lasts, this conviction will be deeply stamped on your mind--that at the tavern where you had so rashly dined in the company of the public, there are two settled rules from which no departure, even accidentally, was ever known to occur. One rule is, never to engage a cook who understands his business; and the other rule is, never to deal with a safe wine-merchant. The impression, however, will be erroneous; for it is possible to obtain, at the very same house, a nice little specimen of cookery for two or three persons, and a few glasses of port, properly so called. The real principle of business seems to be, to send away small parties with favourable ideas of the house, and to dismiss large parties with a conviction that the host's notion of accommodation for man and beast is, that what suits one will suit the other. The wine, however-- port is the name they very facetiously give to it--is on the table; and precisely because no creature more experienced or more delicate than Caliban, could drink three glasses of it, everybody may take a bottle. It is a pity that the prison-discipline philosophers do not make themselves better acquainted with its virtues. Some of that wine sent over to Sydney, or circulated freely in houses of correction, would be found incalculably valuable in the speedy infliction of severe and salutary punishment. Crime would infallibly decrease with the stock of wine. To induce people to drink it, continual appeals are made from the chair, to the loyalty, the gallantry, even the religion of the company. A lineal descendant from Stentor himself is specially engaged to...